My 4-year-old daughter recently tried to use a colander for a puke bowl.

When I recommended that she get a metal bowl and lie down on the couch to settle her tummy, that’s all she could find. Somehow, I feel like this is an odd sort of analogy for nearly every parent and their emotions about education right now. Everything is off, you feel rather ill and the only solutions seem to have a lot of unhelpful holes in them and may be a disaster in the making.

At least, that’s how it feels.

Our family began school at the beginning of August because we homeschool, and I was going crazy without adding a little more structure to our days. On the first day, I burned the bacon for our celebratory breakfast, weathered some toddler tantrums and bristled at some of the inevitable interruptions that peppered our academic time.

Suddenly, a still voice in my heart said, “I’m OK with an imperfect school year. Why can’t you be OK with it, too?”

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